Tuesday, November 21, 2006

IT Education

In response to strong demand among students and the potential job market growth, Kaplan University School of Information Systems and Technology in Davenport, Iowa, announced Nov. 15 two new bachelor's degree programs in IT systems.

The B.S. in Networking Technology focuses on students learning to install and manage operating systems and wireless devices, configure routers and switches, and design and monitor networks.

The Networking Technology degree aims to prepare students for post-college jobs as computer and network systems administrators or system support analysts.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this area of IT will see 12,000 new jobs per year through 2012, with starting salaries anticipated at $49,000.

Kaplan's new B.S. degree in Software Development will have a curriculum focused on the software development life-cycle, from software requirements to design and implementation techniques.

The program aims to prepare college-degreed students for work as entry-level software developers, analysts and programmers, where according to staffing firm Robert Half Technology, 2005 starting salaries ranged from $52,000 to $83,000.

It's a good approach by the Kaplan University School of Information Systems and Technology, since the students will have a focused education and not being filled with a bunch of knowledge which is not really useful. For example, if you are planning to be a system administrator, then you don't have to know how SDLC works (even it's good to know them).

Well, sadly, this is not what has been implemented in most college in Indonesia. When students choose to major an IT related, for example Computer Science, they will be filled with lots of materials from other major also. At the end, most students lack of experience or knowledge and not ready when they entered real world.